Holy Protomartyr and Equal to the Apostles Thekla in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

1. Saint Thekla was from the city of Iconium. Her mother was named Theokleia, and she belonged to a noble and illustrious family. She was instructed in the word of the faith by the great Apostle Paul, whom she heard teaching in the house of Onesiphoros. When she became a Christian, she was eighteen years old and had been betrothed to Thamyris. Later she scorned the fire into which they cast her, as well as her mother and her betrothed, she followed Paul. After these things, she found herself in Antioch, where, because of her faith, Alexander had her thrown among wild beasts and bulls so that they might tear her to pieces. Yet she was saved from all these things by the grace of God. Thereupon she began traveling through various cities, preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, with the result that she brought many people to the Christian faith. Afterwards she returned to her homeland, where she withdrew to some of its mountains and practiced asceticism by herself. She performed many miracles for the people who visited her, until she brought her life to an end, entering into a rock that opened by the power of God for her sake. The total span of her life was ninety years.

Homilies from the Menaion for Every Day of the Year: September 24

The Month of September

Day 24

25. Is There Any Benefit in Hearing the Word of God?

(From the Life of Holy Protomartyr Thekla)

When, at the end of the Divine Liturgy, a lectern is placed on the ambo in the church and the priest comes out to give a sermon, then ordinarily, especially in the cities, nearly a large portion of the people, and especially those who consider themselves educated, rush out of the church. And this, of course, shows that such people either do not wish to acknowledge that there is any benefit in hearing the word of God, or do not understand this at all. Yet there truly is benefit in listening to the word of God, and it is not difficult to prove this.

Holy Protomartyr Thekla was at first a pagan; she came from a noble and distinguished family and was exceptionally beautiful. When she had reached the age of eighteen, the Apostles Paul and Barnabas came to Iconium, where Thekla lived, preaching the gospel. Thekla constantly went to listen to their discourses concerning Christ, and the seed of the word of God fell upon good soil, took root in the heart of the young maiden through the action of the Holy Spirit, and brought forth fruit. Thekla believed in the Son of God and clung to Him with all her soul. Then, after her Baptism, when she heard Paul preach about virginity and chastity, she was persuaded by his preaching of the excellence of virginity and resolved in her heart to leave the world with all its pleasures and serve Christ in virginal purity until her death. Later she listened to the same Apostle while he was in prison, and the result of this listening was that Thekla became fully instructed and firmly established in faith and in ardent love for the Son of God. “Paul,” writes Saint Gregory of Nyssa, “poured the myrrh of his lips into the holy ears of the maiden, and she, for the sake of his words, put to death the outward man within herself and extinguished all vain thoughts and desires.”

Synaxarion of the Venerable Tychon the Hagiorite

Synaxarion

By Haralambos M. Bousias

On the twenty-third of this month, we commemorate of our Venerable Father Tychon, who practiced asceticism in Kapsala of the Holy Mountain.

Verses 

 

As simple and humble, Tychon,
you were deemed worthy of the glory of the Most High,
O citizen of the desert.

He had Novaya Mikhaylovka in Russia as his homeland. He was born in 1884 to pious parents, Paul and Helen, from whom he learned the Orthodox faith, piety, and love for the Lord Jesus. In the prime of his youth, he abandoned the world and, aflame with divine eros, successively withdrew to Mount Sinai, the desert of the Jordan, and the Holy Mountain. There he practiced the ascetic life in a manner pleasing to God for a total of sixty years, living at the Cell of Burazeri and in the wilderness of Karoulia and Kapsala, unceasingly glorifying the name of God.

Venerable Tychon the Hagiorite Resource Page

Venerable Tychon the Hagiorite (Feast Day - September 23)

Verses

 

As simple and humble, Tychon,

You were deemed worthy of the glory of the Most High,
O citizen of the desert. 

 

Synaxarion of the Venerable Tychon the Hagiorite 

 

Christmas With Papa Tychon 

 

Before Papa-Tychon Gave Advice He Would Invoke the Holy Spirit 

 

Venerable Papa-Tychon and the Grandeur of the Divine Liturgy 

 

A Unique Photo of St. Paisios the Athonite with the Russian Elder Papa Tychon 

 

The Cell of the Honorable Cross of Papa Tychon and Elder Paisios 

 

The Last Days of Elder Tychon the Athonite: A Blessed Repose 

 

Saint Paisios the Athonite and his Obedient Frog  

 

The Prayer of Golgotha (Papa Tychon the Hagiorite) 

 

Papa-Tychon and Hatzi-George, Ascetics of Mount Athos, Canonized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate

 

Encomium on the Conception of the Holy Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John (Pseudo-Chrysostom)

Encomium on the Conception of the Holy Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John 

By Pseudo-Chrysostom*

1. Moses the great, the servant of God, the crown of the Prophets, the traveler across the sea, the charioteer of the air, the table-setter of manna, the lawgiver of God, the one who received the sacred tablets, the first teacher of what is beneficial for life — this man, so great and eminent, constructed a tabernacle for the people of Israel according to the pattern that he had been taught by God on the mountain. And he made everything within its enclosure holy and sacred, everything that was contained within the boundary surrounding it; but its innermost part was inaccessible and unapproachable, and was called the Holy of Holies.

Following the pattern of this tabernacle, Solomon also built a temple, surpassing all the temples on earth not only in the magnificence of its materials, nor merely in the variety of its craftsmanship, but also in the form of its construction, so that those who saw it would never desire anything found among the Egyptians. And he made the temple according to the image of the whole universe, both the visible and the intelligible. For just as there are earth and heaven, with the firmament as the partition between them, so God commanded that it should be made in the same way. Dividing this temple into two and placing a veil in the middle, He permitted everyone to enter the part outside the veil, but the part within was inaccessible and unseen by all except the high priest alone, as the angel commanded when he spoke to Moses, telling him to say to the children of Israel: “In the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, humble your souls,” that is, concerning the Feast of Tabernacles. For then, during the Feast of Tabernacles, the high priest alone entered the Holy of Holies once a year to offer incense.

Synaxarion of the Holy New Martyr John of Konitsa

Synaxarion

By Venerable Gerasimos Mikragiannanitis,

On the same day [September 23], the commemoration of the Holy and Glorious New Martyr John, who was from Konitsa in Epirus and suffered martyrdom in Vrachori (Agrinio) in Aetolia in the year 1814.

Verses

Sprung from a foul-smelling root, O John,

You brought forth the sweetest fruits of martyrdom.
On the twenty-third, they cruelly severed John’s neck.

He was from Konitsa, a small town in Epirus, and was born to Ottoman parents, by whom he was also raised in their own delusion. His father, who was a Dervish, enrolled him in the order known as the Dervishes. When he reached the age of twenty, he lived a respectable life, inclining toward Christian virtues and ways with great prudence. Not long afterward, he abandoned his former delusion and came to the light of the knowledge of God, believing in Christ God and being born again through divine Baptism on the island of Ithaca, where he received the name John.

The Conception of Saint John the Baptist in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

The sacred Evangelist Luke relates in his Gospel that when the aged and righteous Zechariah entered the Holy of Holies in order to offer the sacrifice of incense during his period of service in the Temple, the Archangel Gabriel appeared to him and brought him the joyful news that his wife Elizabeth would bear a son in her old age: a Prophet and Forerunner, a voice and herald and everlasting lamp, the initiate of the grace of God. The divine chief commander announced this divine conception to the Prophet and Priest Zechariah with the words: “Your prayer has been heard,” and thus, through this extraordinary birth, on account of the old age and barrenness of Elizabeth, the divine and virginal birth of the all-pure Theotokos also began to be foreshadowed.

First of all, we should note that today’s feast of the conception of Saint John is not based on certain pieces of information from apocryphal Gospels, which one might perhaps call into question, but is a most certain event, recorded, as we said above, by the holy Evangelist Luke. And this means that our Church, by including this event among her divinely inspired texts—certainly, the Gospels do not have the same authority and value as the so-called apocryphal or pseudepigraphical writings: the apocrypha, from the second century AD onward, may preserve genuine elements (for example, those concerning the Birth of the Most Holy Theotokos or her Entry into the Temple), but in many places they contain either false or heretical and misleading information—wishes to emphasize the significance of the coming into the world of John the Forerunner, that is, of that Prophet who would prepare the way for the coming of God Himself as man. Once again, it is in the perspective of the Lord Jesus Christ that the event of the conception of Saint John is evaluated; that is, in the light of the Sun, the light of the lamp is understood. For otherwise, its significance would have had the same force as the conception of every other human being who comes into the world, certainly through the good pleasure of God.

Homilies from the Menaion for Every Day of the Year: September 23

 

The Month of September

Day 23

24. Why John the Baptist Is Greater Than Those Born of Women

(Homily on the Conception of the Glorious and Honorable Prophet, Forerunner, and Baptist of the Lord John)

The Lord said: “Truly I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen one greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11:11). “Greater” means “higher, more perfect, better.” (Interpretation of the Gospel by Bishop Mikhail.) Why did the Lord give John the Baptist such preference among other people? Why is he higher, more perfect, and better than they are? Why has no one greater than him arisen among those born of women? We find the answer to these questions in the Church’s homily on the conception of John the Baptist, and this is what it says about the Baptist in anticipation of the future.

Why will John, who is yet to be born, be great? Will he really be greater and more honorable than the Prophet Jeremiah, to whom the Lord said: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you came forth from the womb I sanctified you: I appointed you as a prophet to the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5)? Yes, the answer says, John will be great before the Lord and will surpass Jeremiah in spiritual greatness. If the latter was sanctified before his birth, then the former, from his mother’s womb, will be incomparably more filled with the Holy Spirit. And if Jeremiah was destined only to prophesy about the Messiah, John was also foreordained to baptize Him and to lay his hand upon Him. But John will surpass not only Jeremiah, but also all the other great Saints in the greatness of God’s grace, and no one greater than him will arise among those born of women... For although many stars precede the rising of the sun, only the morning star precedes the sun itself; so too, although many Prophets foretold the coming of the Messiah, John will not only foretell Him in word, but will also point Him out to the people with his own finger as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And for this reason he will be great and greater than all those born of women. He will be, the homily concludes, “the fulfillment of all the prophets, and the end of the Old Law, and the Forerunner of the new grace.”

Holy Hieromartyr Phocas the Wonderworker in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

1. Saint Phocas was the son of Pamphilos and Maria and lived in the city of Sinope. From a very young age, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, he performed wondrous miracles, and he continued to work miracles until the end of his life. For this reason, God revealed to him his end through martyrdom in the following manner: a dove alighted upon his head and placed a crown upon him, and then the dove said to him with a human voice, ‘A cup has been given to you, and you must drink it.’ Indeed, he was found worthy to drink this cup of martyrdom under the Emperor Trajan, bringing his life to an end by the sword and by fire. Many miracles, of course, were also performed through him after his departure to the Lord.

2. We are grateful to the Lord, who illumines His holy hymnographers so that they may guide us in glorifying His holy name through the Saints. “God is wondrous among His Saints.” The hymnographers, going before us who are the faithful, enable us to transcend the daily reality of the passions and the turmoil they cause, because they open our eyes to see the depth of reality, both with regard to the Church Triumphant and to the Church Militant. This means that the believer who devotes himself, even for a little while, to the Services of the Church, especially Vespers and Matins, experiences an atmosphere different from that of the tragedy of this present life. Not in the sense of fleeing from life, for this is incompatible with the Christian faith and its realism; it would be a denial of the Incarnation of our God, but in the sense that he is raised to such a level that he sees life with a different vision: from the perspective of eternal life. If this does not happen, then any person, even one considered a believer, becomes trapped in this world and enters, as we have said, into the whirlpool of the passions and of the workings of the devil, the ancient source of evil.